Actually, splitting MS is the least likely possibility according to most analysts. Nor is the monopoly abuse of power a proven case. Much as people here would like to dance on Microsoft's grave, the DOJ has to satisfy the legal requirements for an anti-trust suit:
1) The company has a monopoly 2) It abused that monopoly, resulting in economic harm
Neither has been proven to the point where it is obvious.
MS shot itself in the foot when its witness, Richard Schmalansee, said that there is no competing product at the moment. (To top it off, he made truly idiotic remarks such as the one about MS writing their sales figures on paper and not using PCs). OTOH, the govt. witness made a big blunder when he said that no economic harm had been caused to the consumer (which will be a crucial point).
But then, the judge is known to have fallen asleep frequently during the trial and is not a big fan of MS, so it's pretty much a toss of the coin.
They only seem to have performed an expt. with these colored blocks, but a valid expt. needs to have a control sample or control group to contrast the results. The article doesn't mention any.
Also, they seem to loaded the dice by telling the subjects that the red block, then green block, then the black blocks were most likely to have the notch. Anybody would naturally proceed in that order to look at the blocks (which coincidentally happens to be sequential). This hardly constitutes fair conditions for an observational expt.
I think the whole things is generally oversimplified. Simply obtaining data about which *side* of the brain waves are coming from to jump to conclusions that the brain internally processes visual info. sequentially like a CPU is quite a leap. The internal operations of the brain are pretty complex, and I don't think such simple conclusions can be drawn. For instance, the left side of the brain handles right side physiological processes. And BTW, the processing center for sight is located in the back of the brain at the middle (which is why a severe injury there can cause blindness). Since the region is in the center, it may make it all the more difficult to figure out which visual side it could be processing.
"Be very, very careful with telnet. Unless you know what you're doing, it is all plain-text. Capturing packets from a telnet connection on your network is very simple.."
Agreed. However, I think it's extremely unlikely that any company would bother to monitor telnet. In most IT depts., telnet is such an arcane thing that almost nobody uses it, and I'm pretty sure most HR people are unaware of it (I'm talking of regular corporations here, not hardcore geek shops, so don't get all agitated when I say almost nobody uses telnet).
Unless, of course, some weasel sysadmin reading this goes on a telnet sniffing spree. Oh, what have I done?
Actually, I think the key word is 'recording', not 'monitoring'.
Thanks to Linda Tripp, I suppose everyone knows by now that state laws determine whether you can legally record a conversation.
"A one party state means one party to the telephone conversation has to have knowledge and give consent. In a two party state, all parties must have knowledge and give consent. It would appear that, if a telephone conversation crossed state lines, federal law would have jurisdiction. "
I found this URL to be pretty informative. Look up the place you live in. Oddly, most seem to be one party states.
Do you work in a lousy cubicle where you have no real work but have to tap the keys and pretend to be busy? Do you have a clueless boss who only tries to "keep you busy" but who doesn't (and can't) understand what you do?
Obviously, you need to do things to entertain yourself in a stealthy, yet entertaining manner.
What are the best techniques to fight back? (Add your hints, tips, and critiques).
1) A good monitor angle.
This is the best tactic against physical offensive maneuvers from management. The best angle is one which lets you see if someone is coming near you, but which obsures their view of your screen.
2) telnet.
Most places don't bother to monitor telnet. I was at a place that scanned web/e-mail. The first thing I did was login to my ISP's shell account. Once in telnet, I used lynx, irc, pine, etc. to spend the entire day in blissful entertainment. This is one of the best options left.
3) scripts - Really lousy employers count login times, keyboard hits, etc. Automate your work, or your work will make you an automaton.
4) Pre-emptive strikes.
If you have a manager who drops by too often, try going over to his cubicle to give an "update" before he comes by.
5) Easter eggs.
The one in Excel 95 has a DOOM like little game. Try playing it. fun for hours. Hit a key to go back to excel if someone comes by.
6) QBASIC/text based games.
All the usual games are too obtrusive and catch attention. Play a mud, do something in text mode.
Hmmm, that's all I can think of, and the Simpsons are on. Folks, add your own ideas.
Thx. L.
PS - Oh, one more. Use rubber bands, binder clips, etc. to make funny, innovative devices.
Here's the deal: Phone calls cannot be monitored because the phone line is considered a "common carrier" and thus not the property of the company. E-mail and files on your PC, on the other hand, are company property, so they are legally allowed to be searched. Having said that, the crux of the matter is - because a company CAN do it, doesn't mean it SHOULD. Many companies can legally set up cameras in rest rooms. Some do so(there was even a law suit, I think), but for obvious reasons, this is a despicable practice. Similarly, your manager can legally open all your drawers after you leave work, and shuffle through your papers to see if you have a copy of Playboy in there. But how many of you would want to work in a place like that? The bigger issue is this - what exactly does a company achieve by resorting to petty monitoring, other than ruining its own culture and terrifying its employees? Just imagine the massive amount of HR resources spent on this. If someone uses their company time to browse porn, it falls under the category of "Obvious No -No Activity". A company does not install cameras in the restroom to see if its employees are jacking off there. Nor does it hire Cubicle Inspectors to walk around peering over shoulders every 5 minutes to see if someone is working (though clueless managers perform this function adequately) . We rely on common sense and mutual trust in the work place to deal with these things. I am not sure why porn is any different. Obviously we don't try to monitor people who keep playboy (the paper variety) in their drawer. History-repeats-itself Dept: An old article in InfoWorld has a programmer relating a story of the old days when printers started becoming commonplace. Combined with FORTRAN, programmers actually started writing programs to print naked women on a *dot matrix* printer. (One can only imagine how desperate they must - if you've seen a dot matrix printout.) Managers promptly had meetings to resolve the "printer/FORTRAN misuse" issue. Well, it may seem laughable now, but remember - whenever a new technology comes along, this happens. Those who "get it" embrace the potential and use it in powerful and innovative ways. Those who don't get it crack down on those who do. For obvious reasons, HR people belong to the latter category. I'm surprised a Microsoft employee is in there too.;) BTW, "vidi vici veni" is an ancient quip, kinda like the "what is mind, doesn't matter...." joke. Oh, one more note about the phone vs. email privacy. In some states, phone lines with *extensions* can be monitored legally by the employer, since they claim the extension and PBX equipment, etc., is the property of the company. This is a grey area and there have been lawsuits about this. I believe voice mail is totally the property of the company, legally speaking. Ultimately, privacy in the work place is a cultural issue. Any company which deals with sensitivity towards the employees is doing the right thing. Any company which pisses off 10000 people to find the 1 person who looks at porn, probably is out of touch with the way the world is moving. BTW, what is the policy at companies like Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Yahoo, etc? L.
I am not sure if anything at all in technology has succeeded because it was technically better. This may sound cynical, but just look at history:
DOS vs. Mac - DOS wins.
Windows vs. OS/2 - Windows wins.
NeXT vs. everything else - NeXt loses.
klunky 101 keyboard vs. better alternatives - 101 wins.
CISC vs. RISC - Intel bunnies win everything in sight.
Basically, any established technology which does the job in a simple way wins so long as the people behind it keep up the marketing momentum.
And then, the installed base takes care of its own. Nobody would quit windows or linux if a far better OS suddenly appeared. Nobody ever thinks about changing their keyboard layout. And just imagine what would happen if a better alternative to mp3 came along - it would have to be compelling enough to reduce space by a huge amount to justify changing a well-established standard.
As a side note: I believe B&W TV became the standard even though color was around at the time - this was because of political reasons, since David Sarnoff was the chairman of some committee or the other. So there you have it - political power, an installed base, and sheer inertia - the formula for success in establishing standards.
Respond with your answers below. You will get a reply from a qualified Anonymous Coward commenting on your psychological status.
1) Do you have a Shift Key? (Yes/No)
2) Do you have more than 1 shift key? (Yes/No)
3) How long have you been using the Shift Key?
__ Years.
3) What do you use the Shift Key for?
a) Entertainment b) Resumes c) Quake configs d) Porn e) Laziness
4) Do you hate the Caps lock key?
(Yes/No)
5) Did you purchase any product on the Internet using the shift key? (Yes/No)
6) Do you have a shift key at work? (Yes/No)
7) Have you ever used the shift key out of curiousity or to see what happened? (Yes/No)
8) Do you find yourself hitting the shift key for no reason? (Yes/No)
9) Do you find the shift key sexually arousing? (Yes/No)
10) Have you lied to anyone about using the shift key? (Yes/No)
11) Do you find the shift key to be:
a) A way to escape people or other keys b) A way to escape Quake enemies or other keys c) A tool for spiritual growth d) A way to get sexual pleasure e) A way to improve your financial status or the status of your caps lock key.
12) Should the govt. regulate your use of the Shift key?
13) How many times have you used the shift key in answering online surveys
a) 0-3 b) 4-9 c) 10-99 d) hundreds and hundreds of times, practically millions
14) Have you felt anger, loathing, or disgust at certain keys on your keyboard? (If you say yes, your keyboard may self-destruct).
(Yes/No).
15) Did you DELIBERATELY press the shift key at any time during this survey? (You pervert!) ----------------
A few years ago, surveys and studies of this kind were very common. Generally, they ended up stating that people who used the Internet were avid addicts to pornography or worse. I even remember TV shows portraying internet users as child molestors by default.
Over the next few years, something amazing happened - corporations started jumping on the Internet bandwagon like there was no tomorrow. Now, if you were on the "information superhighway", you were hip, cool, and incredibly sophisticated. People in starbucks casually flipped open their laptops and tapped away with ease while sipping their mochas.
OK, big yawn. Gee-whiz and all that. Now we have the second invasion of the internet addiction thingie. The only problem is - it's too common! More people use the TV for more hours than they use PCs. But anybody doing a study on TV addiction would look like a moron ("Do you watch the simpsons every day?").
My prediction is that the frequency of these surveys will die down when the net becomes pervasive. Much like the ones about "electricity addiction", "motor car addiction", and "television addiction".
Actually, the gaming industry is bigger than Hollywood in terms of revenues. This includes consoles+PC games - but overall, the gaming industry is bigger.
The gaming business in 1997 was worth $5.1 billion (of which $3.3 billion was console based).
There's a massive fallacy in this entire thread, which is the assumption that computers are simply the boxes which sit on people's desks while they play soliataire. One very simple test could demonstrate how flawed this assumption is - just turn off all computers for an hour and see how much productivity would plummet. Sure, it wouldn't have any effect on cubicle workers who might think it's another crash. But would GM's assembly line still work? Would banks still function? Would traffic lights or emergency services operate? Would airlines still fly their planes? This whole debate of whether computers are "productive" is so pathetic because people don't even realise this point. Computers are everywhere - from mainframes that keep your power supply running to embedded devices in your car to PCs that run lathes in machine shops. To think the workforce could be as productive without them is a brutally stupid idea. L.
REUTERS: The American Pediatric Association today warned all parents to keep their children away from a web site known as slashdot.org, which frequently allows the ravings of a madman known as Jon Katz. In a recent rebuttal to a post by Jon Katz, the APA pointed out that Katz didn't have a single URL or reference to any statements by it. "Katz makes his own soundbites. He has gotten to the point where he doesn't need any factual matter anymore...he makes his own stuff and people respond to it," said a prominent pediatrician Johnny D. "He writes really long and boring articles repeating the same phrases over and over. This can cause brain damage to anyone who reads it. Actually, most people read only the responses to his articles anyway. This way, the damage is minimized only to Katz, who keeps checking his own articles and getting brain-damaged every time. It's a viscious circle." "We protect our kids from Jon Katz!" said a prominent pediatrician in the Washington, DC, area, hugging her child in fear. "He writes about kids to foment fear and feedback for future articles, but he's also kinda dumb and egocentric, so it's easy to fake it". Prominent scientists pointed out that it's 45% easier to fake a Jon Katz article than a real article. "Well, you just throw in references to prominent scientists", said a prominent scientist. During repeated calls, Jon Katz denied he was stupid and said he was merely pretending to repeat the same themes over and over. "I make up themes. It's kinda like Taco Bell ads. They look the same, but they are different," said Jon Katz. --- this was not written by Jon Katz, unless he is really stupid enough to write this (umm....he isn't. OMG, I just said something good about him.) ---
I find one thing very odd about this whole Red Hat IPO controversy. So far, the scenario has been:
1) Red Hat decides to reward OSS programmers by giving them invitations to a slice of the IPO pie.
2) Invitees rush to apply within the deadline, and then are told of this weird "eligibility" thingie.
3) Some get through, many are declined, leading to much confusion, bile, and foaming bitterness.
So far, so good. What is very, very strange is that many seem to finger this on the fact that the Eligibility Criteria is designed to weed out inexperienced investors based on their lack of wealth, presumably because
a) They may be making an unwise decision by investing in this IPO, and E-Trade is preventing tender young rookies from doing so.
b) Even if the invitees were major code contributors, the IPO managers want them to be, in addition to that, astute and sharp investors.
What's wrong with this picture?
Firstly, as for eligibility criterion a), this is complete and utter balderdash. Money is money - a poor student's $1000 is worth exactly as much as a brilliant Wall Street wizard's $1000 as far as the recipient is concerned. If a startup wants money, the startup tries to impress the investor, not the other way around.
Secondly, if Red Hat/E Trade wanted only 20% or whatever % of those who got the letter to actually invest, they would have sent it to only those people. Processing hundreds of thousands of dollars and then rejecting thousands of applications takes a lot of overhead, bad publicity, and massive amounts of embarrassment for Red Hat. Obviously this was a miscarriage of judgement.
If you really think Red Hat/E-trade denied giving them the stock because they only wanted to take money from savvy investors, I have a bridge to sell you. Do you think E-Trade is spending the tremendous resources it takes to weed thousands of bad/poor investors who are giving money, to protect *them* from making a bad decision?
My guess is - they decided to do this Letter Bonanza as a good gesture that would bring good publicity and strengthen their bond with the open source people by giving them an inside edge. They sent out offers, but then the Wall Street suits (or RH bean counters) cringed at the idea of throwing away so many discount coupons. But..... the offers had already been mailed - and the only way to cut down the number of IPO recipients was to devise a plausible sounding idea. Wait, it couldn't be random, and there was no way to recall offers without angering hundreds of people. So someone came up with the bright idea of...the Eligibility Criteria.
The odd thing is - it actually worked. People here are really believing that they are being chosen based on their investor potential. Do you think E-Trade/Red Hat/ or any other entity which is *receiving* money thinks how good the donor is? You only worry about financial worth when you are *giving* money - never when you're getting it. And even if you decide to give a major discount as a goodwill gesture, you don't care how good the donor is - so long as he/she has the $.
It's completely random (or has some simple arithmetic algorithm to make it seem that they are selecting people who enter big numbers), and a smokescreen designed to crawl back from their financial blunder.
This is why the guy who called them was given a dismissive explanation - obviously they can't do a full-scale recall and make it sound realistic with such a dumbass explantion.
L.
PS - I have no connection with RH, I haven't gotten the letter , and all of this is pure speculation. It just surprised me that so many people went for this eligibility criteria thingie, which smells gimmick from a mile away. If someone here has an IPO/finance background, please respond.
If they beam spam into outer space and it reflects off astronomical debris and bounces back after a century...and SETI picks it up, one can just imagine the headlines:
ALIENS' MESSAGE TO EARTH: "MAKE MONEY FAST!"
or
ALIEN CIVILIZATION OFFERS 100 FREE HOURS OF AOL!
or worst of all
HISTORIC FIRST CONTACT: ALIENS PROMISE FREE DAILY PORN IN YOUR EMAIL!
One interesting anecdote - the author Vikram Seth (Golden Gate, A Suitable Boy) relates how he was writing a 1400 page novel by hand on paper, which lead to a wrist injury. His solution was to use a notebook PC to type the rest of the novel instead of writing by hand - a rather ironic story in today's world where the keyboard is the cause rather than the cure of wrist injury.
Ultimately, the KB is used simply to create text, something humans have been doing for a long time. During the early days of the pen pilot craze, the assumption was that keyboards were crude and cumbersome, and that a machine that read handwriting was the ultimate brilliant thingie. Lately, that viewpoint has died altogether. I'm not sure what the best interface would be - voice rec. isn't really there, and even if it was, it's not good for composing text.
I think one of the biggest weaknesses that linux has is in understanding the needs of ordinary users. Just read some of the responses - people are entrenched in their position that "linux rox, windows sux".
This attitude is out of touch with the masses. By masses, I mean the 200+ million windows users. People who do not know what a video card is. People who don't know how to change fonts. People who don't give a damn about "themes", kernel modules, or nifty configs.
The major linux base still consists of 10 million people - basically programmers, their friends and relatives, and people fond of technical/computing subjects. The question is if this figure is going to eat a big chunk of the 200 million windows users.
a) Does the linux community even understand how difficult and intimidating ordinary people find computers? I read lines like "just slap in the NIC card and configure it and you're all set". Do people here even realise how clueless people are with PCs?
b) Do they care? If they don't, then linux will be stuck with those with a technical bent, while windows will cater to the rest.
The tendency to dig in and claim that linux is way easier than windows, and scoff at all evidence to the contrary, will ensure only that the user base is stuck where it is presently - with the ones who find linux easier than windows.
L.
(PS - please don't give anecdotes about how you find linux so easy. That is the whole point of this post - I'm not talking about us geeks, I'm talking about non-technical people who have never used linux and whether *they* find it easier. Again, non-technical, as in - someone who doesn't know what RAM means.)
You're partly correct. The latest Oxford English Dictionary says that it's now acceptable to use "they" instead of "he or she" as the latter construction becomes cumbersome when used often.
Another major change was the acceptance of split infinitives, to greatly improve the usability of.
It's possible your personal experience with stability was on the far end of the bell curve - just because linux is more stable than windows on the average doesn't mean every linux machine is more stable than windows; the opposite is also possible.
As for poorly written drivers, it doesn't matter that the cause is that windows has to support more hardware - that's not an excuse for releasing unreliable software.
About linux support, I find it very surprising that you've gotten bad support. Normally people are very eager to help - the local user group here will install and fix problems for you in person if you bring your PC. Once you get the hang of asking questions on mailing lists or usenet you should have no problems.
About Win32 API vs. KDE/Gnome: KDE and Gnome aren't APIs. They are GUIs.
L.
Re:It means what? (Was:Static page requests, BAH!.
on
NT vs. Linux: Again
·
· Score: 1
I didn't say the linux kernel was narrowly targeted. I was referring to Sun Tzu's comment:
"Realisticly, what I think MS has done here is create a "benchmark special". They have picked two high-profile applications and integrated them into the kernel a little too intimately so they can claim that NT in general is faster than Linux."
If you think about it, it's quite unlikely that MS would deliberately create a benchmark special OS to beat linux. It would be possible if web servers were their primary business and they wouldn't weaken the rest of their client base by specifically modifying the NT kernel just for web servers. However, MS has such a huge market that this would be a stupid move, esp. since they have been striving to merge the 95/NT code bases and haven't been able to do so yet.
Why would they jeopardize that goal and risk screwing up software for their 200 million paying customers just to satisfy a benchmark against linux for a webserver that they give away for free?
If the benchmark is rigged in favor of NT, I'm not sure why RH and Penguin would approve of it.
As for Solaris, BSD, etc. I think this whole saga started off as a Microsoft sponsored campaign run via Mindcraft to attack linux. Since it backfired very badly in the media when the connection became painfully obvious, the rematch was held to resolve all doubts.
Note - after the first test, there was quite a bit of positive media coverage of linux, about how the response was positive and attempted to fix the disadvantages. Wouldn't hurt to do a repeat, instead of looking for scapegoats.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Scientific American article on the guy -
. html
http://www.sciam.com/1998/0898issue/0898profile
L.
Actually, splitting MS is the least likely possibility according to most analysts. Nor is the monopoly abuse of power a proven case. Much as people here would like to dance on Microsoft's grave, the DOJ has to satisfy the legal requirements for an anti-trust suit:
1) The company has a monopoly
2) It abused that monopoly, resulting in economic harm
Neither has been proven to the point where it is obvious.
MS shot itself in the foot when its witness, Richard Schmalansee, said that there is no competing product at the moment. (To top it off, he made truly idiotic remarks such as the one about MS writing their sales figures on paper and not using PCs). OTOH, the govt. witness made a big blunder when he said that no economic harm had been caused to the consumer (which will be a crucial point).
But then, the judge is known to have fallen asleep frequently during the trial and is not a big fan of MS, so it's pretty much a toss of the coin.
L.
They only seem to have performed an expt. with these colored blocks, but a valid expt. needs to have a control sample or control group to contrast the results. The article doesn't mention any.
Also, they seem to loaded the dice by telling the subjects that the red block, then green block, then the black blocks were most likely to have the notch. Anybody would naturally proceed in that order to look at the blocks (which coincidentally happens to be sequential). This hardly constitutes fair conditions for an observational expt.
I think the whole things is generally oversimplified. Simply obtaining data about which *side* of the brain waves are coming from to jump to conclusions that the brain internally processes visual info. sequentially like a CPU is quite a leap. The internal operations of the brain are pretty complex, and I don't think such simple conclusions can be drawn. For instance, the left side of the brain handles right side physiological processes. And BTW, the processing center for sight is located in the back of the brain at the middle (which is why a severe injury there can cause blindness). Since the region is in the center, it may make it all the more difficult to figure out which visual side it could be processing.
L.
I don't think these maps are accurate or worth buying until they show this point - which is the very edge of the Internet.
http://opaldata.com/the_end/index.html
It would be like a map of the earth which doesn't show the Cape of Good Hope.
L.
"Be very, very careful with telnet. Unless you know what you're doing, it is all plain-text. Capturing packets from a telnet connection on your network is very simple.."
Agreed. However, I think it's extremely unlikely that any company would bother to monitor telnet. In most IT depts., telnet is such an arcane thing that almost nobody uses it, and I'm pretty sure most HR people are unaware of it (I'm talking of regular corporations here, not hardcore geek shops, so don't get all agitated when I say almost nobody uses telnet).
Unless, of course, some weasel sysadmin reading this goes on a telnet sniffing spree. Oh, what have I done?
L.
Actually, I think the key word is 'recording', not 'monitoring'.
Thanks to Linda Tripp, I suppose everyone knows by now that state laws determine whether you can legally record a conversation.
"A one party state means one party to the telephone conversation has to have knowledge and give consent. In a two party state, all parties must have knowledge and give consent. It would appear that, if a telephone conversation crossed state lines, federal law would have jurisdiction. "
I found this URL to be pretty informative. Look up the place you live in. Oddly, most seem to be one party states.
http://www.pimall.com/nais/n.tel.tape.law.html
L.
Do you work in a lousy cubicle where you have no real work but have to tap the keys and pretend to be busy? Do you have a clueless boss who only tries to "keep you busy" but who doesn't (and can't) understand what you do?
Obviously, you need to do things to entertain yourself in a stealthy, yet entertaining manner.
What are the best techniques to fight back? (Add your hints, tips, and critiques).
1) A good monitor angle.
This is the best tactic against physical offensive maneuvers from management. The best angle is one which lets you see if someone is coming near you, but which obsures their view of your screen.
2) telnet.
Most places don't bother to monitor telnet. I was at a place that scanned web/e-mail. The first thing I did was login to my ISP's shell account. Once in telnet, I used lynx, irc, pine, etc. to spend the entire day in blissful entertainment. This is one of the best options left.
3) scripts - Really lousy employers count login times, keyboard hits, etc. Automate your work, or your work will make you an automaton.
4) Pre-emptive strikes.
If you have a manager who drops by too often, try going over to his cubicle to give an "update" before he comes by.
5) Easter eggs.
The one in Excel 95 has a DOOM like little game. Try playing it. fun for hours. Hit a key to go back to excel if someone comes by.
6) QBASIC/text based games.
All the usual games are too obtrusive and catch attention. Play a mud, do something in text mode.
Hmmm, that's all I can think of, and the Simpsons are on. Folks, add your own ideas.
Thx.
L.
PS - Oh, one more. Use rubber bands, binder clips, etc. to make funny, innovative devices.
:)
Here's the deal: Phone calls cannot be monitored because the phone line is considered a "common carrier" and thus not the property of the company. E-mail and files on your PC, on the other hand, are company property, so they are legally allowed to be searched. Having said that, the crux of the matter is - because a company CAN do it, doesn't mean it SHOULD. Many companies can legally set up cameras in rest rooms. Some do so(there was even a law suit, I think), but for obvious reasons, this is a despicable practice. Similarly, your manager can legally open all your drawers after you leave work, and shuffle through your papers to see if you have a copy of Playboy in there. But how many of you would want to work in a place like that? The bigger issue is this - what exactly does a company achieve by resorting to petty monitoring, other than ruining its own culture and terrifying its employees? Just imagine the massive amount of HR resources spent on this. If someone uses their company time to browse porn, it falls under the category of "Obvious No -No Activity". A company does not install cameras in the restroom to see if its employees are jacking off there. Nor does it hire Cubicle Inspectors to walk around peering over shoulders every 5 minutes to see if someone is working (though clueless managers perform this function adequately) . We rely on common sense and mutual trust in the work place to deal with these things. I am not sure why porn is any different. Obviously we don't try to monitor people who keep playboy (the paper variety) in their drawer. History-repeats-itself Dept: An old article in InfoWorld has a programmer relating a story of the old days when printers started becoming commonplace. Combined with FORTRAN, programmers actually started writing programs to print naked women on a *dot matrix* printer. (One can only imagine how desperate they must - if you've seen a dot matrix printout.) Managers promptly had meetings to resolve the "printer/FORTRAN misuse" issue. Well, it may seem laughable now, but remember - whenever a new technology comes along, this happens. Those who "get it" embrace the potential and use it in powerful and innovative ways. Those who don't get it crack down on those who do. For obvious reasons, HR people belong to the latter category. I'm surprised a Microsoft employee is in there too. ;) BTW, "vidi vici veni" is an ancient quip, kinda like the "what is mind, doesn't matter...." joke. Oh, one more note about the phone vs. email privacy. In some states, phone lines with *extensions* can be monitored legally by the employer, since they claim the extension and PBX equipment, etc., is the property of the company. This is a grey area and there have been lawsuits about this. I believe voice mail is totally the property of the company, legally speaking. Ultimately, privacy in the work place is a cultural issue. Any company which deals with sensitivity towards the employees is doing the right thing. Any company which pisses off 10000 people to find the 1 person who looks at porn, probably is out of touch with the way the world is moving. BTW, what is the policy at companies like Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Yahoo, etc? L.
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Wow. It only took him several articles to get it right. I'm glad /. entrusts people with such a solid grasp of technology to write about technology.
L.
I am not sure if anything at all in technology has succeeded because it was technically better. This may sound cynical, but just look at history:
DOS vs. Mac - DOS wins.
Windows vs. OS/2 - Windows wins.
NeXT vs. everything else - NeXt loses.
klunky 101 keyboard vs. better alternatives - 101 wins.
CISC vs. RISC - Intel bunnies win everything in sight.
Basically, any established technology which does the job in a simple way wins so long as the people behind it keep up the marketing momentum.
And then, the installed base takes care of its own. Nobody would quit windows or linux if a far better OS suddenly appeared. Nobody ever thinks about changing their keyboard layout. And just imagine what would happen if a better alternative to mp3 came along - it would have to be compelling enough to reduce space by a huge amount to justify changing a well-established standard.
As a side note: I believe B&W TV became the standard even though color was around at the time - this was because of political reasons, since David Sarnoff was the chairman of some committee or the other. So there you have it - political power, an installed base, and sheer inertia - the formula for success in establishing standards.
L.
Respond with your answers below. You will get a reply from a qualified Anonymous Coward commenting on your psychological status.
1) Do you have a Shift Key? (Yes/No)
2) Do you have more than 1 shift key? (Yes/No)
3) How long have you been using the Shift Key?
__ Years.
3) What do you use the Shift Key for?
a) Entertainment
b) Resumes
c) Quake configs
d) Porn
e) Laziness
4) Do you hate the Caps lock key?
(Yes/No)
5) Did you purchase any product on the Internet using the shift key? (Yes/No)
6) Do you have a shift key at work? (Yes/No)
7) Have you ever used the shift key out of curiousity or to see what happened? (Yes/No)
8) Do you find yourself hitting the shift key for no reason? (Yes/No)
9) Do you find the shift key sexually arousing? (Yes/No)
10) Have you lied to anyone about using the shift key? (Yes/No)
11) Do you find the shift key to be:
a) A way to escape people or other keys
b) A way to escape Quake enemies or other keys
c) A tool for spiritual growth
d) A way to get sexual pleasure
e) A way to improve your financial status or the status of your caps lock key.
12) Should the govt. regulate your use of the Shift key?
13) How many times have you used the shift key in answering online surveys
a) 0-3
b) 4-9
c) 10-99
d) hundreds and hundreds of times, practically millions
14) Have you felt anger, loathing, or disgust at certain keys on your keyboard? (If you say yes, your keyboard may self-destruct).
(Yes/No).
15) Did you DELIBERATELY press the shift key at any time during this survey? (You pervert!)
----------------
L.
A few years ago, surveys and studies of this kind were very common. Generally, they ended up stating that people who used the Internet were avid addicts to pornography or worse. I even remember TV shows portraying internet users as child molestors by default.
Over the next few years, something amazing happened - corporations started jumping on the Internet bandwagon like there was no tomorrow. Now, if you were on the "information superhighway", you were hip, cool, and incredibly sophisticated. People in starbucks casually flipped open their laptops and tapped away with ease while sipping their mochas.
OK, big yawn. Gee-whiz and all that. Now we have the second invasion of the internet addiction thingie. The only problem is - it's too common! More people use the TV for more hours than they use PCs. But anybody doing a study on TV addiction would look like a moron ("Do you watch the simpsons every day?").
My prediction is that the frequency of these surveys will die down when the net becomes pervasive. Much like the ones about "electricity addiction", "motor car addiction", and "television addiction".
L.
Actually, the gaming industry is bigger than Hollywood in terms of revenues. This includes consoles+PC games - but overall, the gaming industry is bigger.
The gaming business in 1997 was worth $5.1 billion (of which $3.3 billion was console based).
L.
There's a massive fallacy in this entire thread, which is the assumption that computers are simply the boxes which sit on people's desks while they play soliataire. One very simple test could demonstrate how flawed this assumption is - just turn off all computers for an hour and see how much productivity would plummet. Sure, it wouldn't have any effect on cubicle workers who might think it's another crash. But would GM's assembly line still work? Would banks still function? Would traffic lights or emergency services operate? Would airlines still fly their planes? This whole debate of whether computers are "productive" is so pathetic because people don't even realise this point. Computers are everywhere - from mainframes that keep your power supply running to embedded devices in your car to PCs that run lathes in machine shops. To think the workforce could be as productive without them is a brutally stupid idea. L.
REUTERS: The American Pediatric Association today warned all parents to keep their children away from a web site known as slashdot.org, which frequently allows the ravings of a madman known as Jon Katz. In a recent rebuttal to a post by Jon Katz, the APA pointed out that Katz didn't have a single URL or reference to any statements by it. "Katz makes his own soundbites. He has gotten to the point where he doesn't need any factual matter anymore...he makes his own stuff and people respond to it," said a prominent pediatrician Johnny D. "He writes really long and boring articles repeating the same phrases over and over. This can cause brain damage to anyone who reads it. Actually, most people read only the responses to his articles anyway. This way, the damage is minimized only to Katz, who keeps checking his own articles and getting brain-damaged every time. It's a viscious circle." "We protect our kids from Jon Katz!" said a prominent pediatrician in the Washington, DC, area, hugging her child in fear. "He writes about kids to foment fear and feedback for future articles, but he's also kinda dumb and egocentric, so it's easy to fake it". Prominent scientists pointed out that it's 45% easier to fake a Jon Katz article than a real article. "Well, you just throw in references to prominent scientists", said a prominent scientist. During repeated calls, Jon Katz denied he was stupid and said he was merely pretending to repeat the same themes over and over. "I make up themes. It's kinda like Taco Bell ads. They look the same, but they are different," said Jon Katz. --- this was not written by Jon Katz, unless he is really stupid enough to write this (umm....he isn't. OMG, I just said something good about him.) ---
I find one thing very odd about this whole Red Hat IPO controversy. So far, the scenario has been:
1) Red Hat decides to reward OSS programmers by giving them invitations to a slice of the IPO pie.
2) Invitees rush to apply within the deadline, and then are told of this weird "eligibility" thingie.
3) Some get through, many are declined, leading to much confusion, bile, and foaming bitterness.
So far, so good. What is very, very strange is that many seem to finger this on the fact that the Eligibility Criteria is designed to weed out inexperienced investors based on their lack of wealth, presumably because
a) They may be making an unwise decision by investing in this IPO, and E-Trade is preventing tender young rookies from doing so.
b) Even if the invitees were major code contributors, the IPO managers want them to be, in addition to that, astute and sharp investors.
What's wrong with this picture?
Firstly, as for eligibility criterion a), this is complete and utter balderdash. Money is money - a poor student's $1000 is worth exactly as much as a brilliant Wall Street wizard's $1000 as far as the recipient is concerned. If a startup wants money, the startup tries to impress the investor, not the other way around.
Secondly, if Red Hat/E Trade wanted only 20% or whatever % of those who got the letter to actually invest, they would have sent it to only those people. Processing hundreds of thousands of dollars and then rejecting thousands of applications takes a lot of overhead, bad publicity, and massive amounts of embarrassment for Red Hat. Obviously this was a miscarriage of judgement.
If you really think Red Hat/E-trade denied giving them the stock because they only wanted to take money from savvy investors, I have a bridge to sell you. Do you think E-Trade is spending the tremendous resources it takes to weed thousands of bad/poor investors who are giving money, to protect *them* from making a bad decision?
My guess is - they decided to do this Letter Bonanza as a good gesture that would bring good publicity and strengthen their bond with the open source people by giving them an inside edge. They sent out offers, but then the Wall Street suits (or RH bean counters) cringed at the idea of throwing away so many discount coupons. But..... the offers had already been mailed - and the only way to cut down the number of IPO recipients was to devise a plausible sounding idea. Wait, it couldn't be random, and there was no way to recall offers without angering hundreds of people. So someone came up with the bright idea of
The odd thing is - it actually worked. People here are really believing that they are being chosen based on their investor potential. Do you think E-Trade/Red Hat/ or any other entity which is *receiving* money thinks how good the donor is? You only worry about financial worth when you are *giving* money - never when you're getting it. And even if you decide to give a major discount as a goodwill gesture, you don't care how good the donor is - so long as he/she has the $.
It's completely random (or has some simple arithmetic algorithm to make it seem that they are selecting people who enter big numbers), and a smokescreen designed to crawl back from their financial blunder.
This is why the guy who called them was given a dismissive explanation - obviously they can't do a full-scale recall and make it sound realistic with such a dumbass explantion.
L.
PS - I have no connection with RH, I haven't gotten the letter , and all of this is pure speculation. It just surprised me that so many people went for this eligibility criteria thingie, which smells gimmick from a mile away. If someone here has an IPO/finance background, please respond.
If they beam spam into outer space and it reflects off astronomical debris and bounces back after a century
ALIENS' MESSAGE TO EARTH: "MAKE MONEY FAST!"
or
ALIEN CIVILIZATION OFFERS 100 FREE HOURS OF AOL!
or worst of all
HISTORIC FIRST CONTACT: ALIENS PROMISE FREE DAILY PORN IN YOUR EMAIL!
L.
One interesting anecdote - the author Vikram Seth (Golden Gate, A Suitable Boy) relates how he was writing a 1400 page novel by hand on paper, which lead to a wrist injury. His solution was to use a notebook PC to type the rest of the novel instead of writing by hand - a rather ironic story in today's world where the keyboard is the cause rather than the cure of wrist injury.
Ultimately, the KB is used simply to create text, something humans have been doing for a long time. During the early days of the pen pilot craze, the assumption was that keyboards were crude and cumbersome, and that a machine that read handwriting was the ultimate brilliant thingie. Lately, that viewpoint has died altogether. I'm not sure what the best interface would be - voice rec. isn't really there, and even if it was, it's not good for composing text.
Is there an alternative?
L.
I think one of the biggest weaknesses that linux has is in understanding the needs of ordinary users. Just read some of the responses - people are entrenched in their position that "linux rox, windows sux".
This attitude is out of touch with the masses. By masses, I mean the 200+ million windows users. People who do not know what a video card is. People who don't know how to change fonts. People who don't give a damn about "themes", kernel modules, or nifty configs.
The major linux base still consists of 10 million people - basically programmers, their friends and relatives, and people fond of technical/computing subjects. The question is if this figure is going to eat a big chunk of the 200 million windows users.
a) Does the linux community even understand how difficult and intimidating ordinary people find computers? I read lines like "just slap in the NIC card and configure it and you're all set". Do people here even realise how clueless people are with PCs?
b) Do they care? If they don't, then linux will be stuck with those with a technical bent, while windows will cater to the rest.
The tendency to dig in and claim that linux is way easier than windows, and scoff at all evidence to the contrary, will ensure only that the user base is stuck where it is presently - with the ones who find linux easier than windows.
L.
(PS - please don't give anecdotes about how you find linux so easy. That is the whole point of this post - I'm not talking about us geeks, I'm talking about non-technical people who have never used linux and whether *they* find it easier. Again, non-technical, as in - someone who doesn't know what RAM means.)
You're partly correct. The latest Oxford English Dictionary says that it's now acceptable to use "they" instead of "he or she" as the latter construction becomes cumbersome when used often.
Another major change was the acceptance of split infinitives, to greatly improve the usability of.
L.
It's possible your personal experience with stability was on the far end of the bell curve - just because linux is more stable than windows on the average doesn't mean every linux machine is more stable than windows; the opposite is also possible.
As for poorly written drivers, it doesn't matter that the cause is that windows has to support more hardware - that's not an excuse for releasing unreliable software.
About linux support, I find it very surprising that you've gotten bad support. Normally people are very eager to help - the local user group here will install and fix problems for you in person if you bring your PC. Once you get the hang of asking questions on mailing lists or usenet you should have no problems.
About Win32 API vs. KDE/Gnome: KDE and Gnome aren't APIs. They are GUIs.
L.
I didn't say the linux kernel was narrowly targeted. I was referring to Sun Tzu's comment:
"Realisticly, what I think MS has done here is create a "benchmark special". They have picked two high-profile applications and integrated them into the kernel a little too intimately so they can claim that NT in general is faster than Linux."
If you think about it, it's quite unlikely that MS would deliberately create a benchmark special OS to beat linux. It would be possible if web servers were their primary business and they wouldn't weaken the rest of their client base by specifically modifying the NT kernel just for web servers. However, MS has such a huge market that this would be a stupid move, esp. since they have been striving to merge the 95/NT code bases and haven't been able to do so yet.
Why would they jeopardize that goal and risk screwing up software for their 200 million paying customers just to satisfy a benchmark against linux for a webserver that they give away for free?
L.
L.
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/06/16/linux _shootout/index1.html
:)
describes the conditions of the test.
If the benchmark is rigged in favor of NT, I'm not sure why RH and Penguin would approve of it.
As for Solaris, BSD, etc. I think this whole saga started off as a Microsoft sponsored campaign run via Mindcraft to attack linux. Since it backfired very badly in the media when the connection became painfully obvious, the rematch was held to resolve all doubts.
Note - after the first test, there was quite a bit of positive media coverage of linux, about how the response was positive and attempted to fix the disadvantages. Wouldn't hurt to do a repeat, instead of looking for scapegoats.